Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a black civil rightsactivist. She is most famous for her arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus for a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955. (At the time, white passengers were given priority seating.) For refusing to give up her seat, Parks was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined $14. [1] This arrest led to a boycott of the Montgomery public bus system that lasted over a year, and culminated in the reversal of the seating policy. The incident is considered to be a landmark event in the Civil Rights Movement.

The bus incident was not Parks' first foray into civil rights activism. Prior to this, she had served as a secretary for the NAACP, and she recounted in an interview that she had experienced past confrontations with bus drivers. [2]